Arabic potential contender for official WTO language

Arab members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are pushing for Arabic to be recognized as an official language, along with English, French and Spanish. The addition of Arabic would come with a heavy price tag due to the costs associated with translating, interpreting and printing.

As a Reuters article suggests, adding Arabic would most likely prompt proposals for Chinese and Russian as well, which would align WTO’s language policy to that of the United Nations.

“Well maybe Russian is a bit premature,” said one ambassador, referring to Moscow’s on-again off-again access process with the WTO.

Adding three languages would cost about 45 million Swiss francs ($43 million) a year, the ambassador said — no small amount given a total WTO budget in 2009 of 189 million francs.

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